"I thought that I was strong enough to take a brother's place. I had lived my life; I had been a failure. I had sinned, and paid forfeit for my sin. I thought I had done with passionate feeling; and that I could trust myself as fully as Vera trusted me, in her absolute unconsciousness of danger. I was deceived. The fire still burned in the grey ashes of a wasted life, and the time came when it burst into flame and consumed us." "You were with her that night when Provana came home unexpectedly?" "I was with her. No matter how that came about. The die had been cast weeks before, when she and I were at the Okehamptons' river villa. We were alone there as if we had been in a wood, and our secret was told and our promise was exchanged. Nothing was to matter any more in our lives except our love. We were to go to the other side of the world and cruise about in the South Seas till we found an island, as Stevenson did, a paradise of love and peace, to end our days in. The yacht was waiting for us at Plymouth, manned and found for an ocean voyage--almost as fine a vessel as the _Gloriana_. We were to start by an early train that morning. I wrung a promise from her at Lady Fulham's ball; and we met a few hours earlier than we had intended." "And he found you together, and you killed him?" "It was her life or his. We faced each other at the door of his dressing-room. The other door was open and the lights were on. I saw death in his face as he stood for a moment looking into her room, the white, dumb rage that means bloodshed. He gave me only one contemptuous glance as he dashed past me to the desk where his pistol case was ready for him. He had the pistol in his hand and had cocked it in what had seemed an instant, and was on his way to her room while I snatched the second pistol from the case. For me he could bide his time. For her, doom was to be swift. I think I read him right even in those fierce moments. His fury was measured by the love he had given her. His foot was on the threshold when I fired. I could hear her stifled sobs as she lay on the floor, where she had fallen at the sound of his footsteps on the landing, half unconscious, in her agony of shame. She told me afterwards that strange lights were in her eyes, a roar of waters in her ears. She was lying in a world of red light." "Well, what do you want of me now?" "Open the door of my cell, the Benedictines, the Carthusians, La Trappe--in France or Spain, any order where the rule is iron, and where my days will be short. I have lived the sinner's life, and it has not brought me happiness. Let me live the saint's life, and see if it can bring me peace. I am not a much blacker sinner than some of the fathers of your Church who wear the aureole. Let the rest of my life be one long act of expiation, one dark night of penitential prayer." "My dear Claude, my son, all shall be done for you. The path of peace shall be made smooth; but this time there must be no turning back."